In March 2020, I outlined where I thought tech giant Nvidia's business and stock would be in five years, or in March 2025. It's now a little past the five-year mark, so how did I do?

Overall, I'd give myself a B or a B+. I was mostly correct in my business predictions and accurate about what investors care about the most, the stock price: "I feel very comfortable predicting that Nvidia stock will solidly outperform the market over the next half decade," I wrote.

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Indeed, from March 1, 2020 (when my five-year predictions article published) through March 1, 2025, Nvidia stock's total return was 1,760% -- nearly 15 times the S&P 500's return of 118%. In other words, Nvidia stock turned a $1,000 investment into a whopping $18,600 over this five-year period. (Nvidia stock's five-year return through the date of this writing, June 4, is a little lower, as the chart below shows. Shares are up since March 1; it's the change in the 2020 start date that slightly lowers their current five-year return.)

Nvidia stock's fantastic performance has largely been driven by the incredible demand for the company's graphics processing units (GPUs) and related technology that enable artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Prediction 1: CEO Jensen Huang will still be leading the company

Status: Correct.

In March 2020, I wrote that "as long as [Huang] stays healthy, the odds seem in favor of his still being at Nvidia's helm in five years."

For context, Jensen Huang, who co-founded the company in 1993, turned 62 in February, according to public records.

Nvidia investors should certainly hope that Huang remains the company's leader for some time. As I wrote in June 2024:

Nvidia is many years ahead of the competition in AI-enabling technology thanks to Huang's foresight. Starting more than a decade ago, he began to steadily use profits from Nvidia's once-core computer gaming business to position the company to be in the catbird seat when the "AI Age" truly arrived.

Prediction 2: Nvidia will still be the leading supplier of graphics cards for computer gaming

Status: Correct.

Here's part of what I wrote in the March 2020 article:

Nvidia dominates the market for discrete graphics processing units (GPUs) -- the key component in graphics cards for desktop computer gaming. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the company controlled 68.9% of this market.

Nvidia has increased its leadership position over the last five years. In the fourth quarter of 2024, it had an 82% share of the desktop discrete GPU market, compared with longtime rival Advanced Micro Devices' 17% share, according to Jon Peddie Research. Intel, which entered this market in 2022, had a 1% share.

Growth in Nvidia's gaming market platform will be covered below.

Prediction 3: The global gaming market will continue its robust growth

Status: Correct.

In March 2020, I wrote: "In 2025, the gaming market should be much bigger [relative to 2020]."

By all counts -- the number of global gamers, total computer gaming market revenue, and computer gaming PC revenue -- the computer gaming market has grown solidly over the last five years.

And Nvidia has benefited nicely from this growth. In fiscal year 2020 (ended late January 2020), the company's gaming market platform generated revenue of $5.52 billion. In fiscal 2025 (ended in late January), this platform's revenue was $11.35 billion. This increase amounts to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5%.

This is strong growth for such a huge market. It might not seem so only because Nvidia's data center market platform's growth has been phenomenal over this same period.

In fiscal 2020, gaming was Nvidia's largest platform, accounting for 51% of its total revenue. In fiscal 2025, gaming was its second-largest platform behind data center, contributing about 9% of its total revenue.

Prediction 4: Nvidia's GPUs will still be the gold standard for AI training

Status: Correct.

In March 2020, I wrote:

The company's GPU-based approach to accelerating computing is considered the gold standard for DL [deep learning, the dominant type of AI] training, the first step in the two-step DL process. [The second step is inferencing.] This statement is extremely likely to hold true in 2025, in my opinion.

Since 2020, both AMD and Intel have launched GPUs for AI-powered data centers, but Nvidia's grip on this market -- which is growing like wildfire -- remains tight. IoT Analytics, a technology market research firm, estimates Nvidia had a 92% share of the data center GPU market in 2024.

As an added plus, since 2020, Nvidia's GPUs have gone from having very little share of the AI inferencing chip market to having the largest chunk of this market. Inferencing is the running of an AI application.

In fiscal 2020, Nvidia's data center platform's revenue was $2.98 billion. It skyrocketed to $115.2 billion in fiscal 2025, equating to about a 107% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). This amazing growth powered the data center to account for 88% of Nvidia's total revenue in fiscal 2025, up from 27% in fiscal 2020.

Prediction 5: The legalization of driverless vehicles will turbocharge its auto platform's growth

Status: My timeline was too optimistic.

In March 2020, I wrote: "In 2025, fully autonomous vehicles should be legal -- or very close to being so -- across the United States. Nvidia is well positioned to majorly profit from [this event]."

I wouldn't say that fully autonomous vehicles are "very close" to being legal across the U.S. This event seems at least a few years away. But I continue to believe this watershed event will "turbocharge" Nvidia's growth thanks to its widely adopted AI-powered DRIVE platform.

Prediction 6. The X factor

Status: Correct.

In March 2020, I wrote: "Nvidia is incredibly innovative, so there seems a great chance that the company will introduce at least one major new technology that takes nearly everyone by surprise."

Over the last five years, Nvidia has launched a good number of major new technologies that have likely taken most investors and Wall Street analysts by surprise.

One example is its Omniverse platform, which launched in 2021. This is a simulation platform that enables the creation of virtual worlds and digital twins. It's been widely adopted by a broad industry range of large enterprise companies -- including Amazon, PepsiCo, and BMW Group -- for uses such as designing products and optimizing facility workflow.

2020 article ending: And Nvidia's stock price in 2025?

Status: Correct.

Here's what I wrote in March 2020:

It's impossible to predict a company's stock price in five years because so many unknowns ... can have a huge influence on the market in general. That said, given the projections made in this article, I feel very comfortable predicting that Nvidia stock will solidly outperform the market over the next half decade.

Stay tuned. I'm planning on a predictions article similar to my 2020 one. Hint: It's going to be optimistic, as Nvidia's highly profitable strong revenue growth is far from over, in my opinion.

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Beth McKenna has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Intel, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft and recommends the following options: short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The risk has been increasing that the United States will have a recession in 2025 or within the next year, according to top Wall Street firms and economists. Recession risk has risen sharply over the last few months, largely due to the trade war and the potential for tariffs to hurt U.S. (and global) economic growth and ignite inflation.

Below I'll explore the current probability of a near-term recession and what stocks could hold up best during the next recession.

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What's the probability of a near-term recession in the United States?

Many of the probability estimates from experts that the U.S. will have a recession in 2025 or within one year fall within the 40% to 60% range, though there are some credible sources with estimates that are lower and higher. In early April, Wall Street company Goldman Sachs boosted its one-year recession-risk probability to 45% from 35%, which it had previously increased from 20% in late March.

Also in early April, JPMorgan pegged the odds of a U.S. recession in 2025 at 60%, up from its early March forecast of 40%. In mid-April, the investment bank reiterated its 60% probability. It said that President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on his April 2 country-specific so-called reciprocal tariffs "reduces the shock to the global trading order, but the remaining universal 10% tariff is still a material threat to growth, and the 145% tariff on China keeps the probability of a recession at 60%."

Which categories of stocks should hold up best during the next recession?

Certain categories of stocks tend to perform better than others during economic downturns. These mostly include what are called "defensive stocks" that tend to pay dividends.

Defensive stocks include several broad classes, including:

• Stocks of companies that make products or provide services that people need no matter the economic climate.
• Gold and silver mining stocks. Precious metals are considered hedges on inflation and the relative value of the U.S. dollar, which generally weakens during recessions.

Examples of the first group listed above include:

• Consumer staples: Food and beverage makers, personal and home care products manufacturers.
• Utilities: Water, electric, and gas utilities.
• Healthcare: Pharmaceutical makers, medical-device makers.
• Discount retailers: In tough economic times, many consumers tend to be more price-conscious.

There are other types of stocks that tend to weather recessions well. You can think of one group as "small indulgence stocks."

During economic downturns, many people will feel uncertain about their job security. As a result, they'll put off large expenditures, such as homes and new vehicles, and cut back their spending on discretionary items, such as clothing.

However, many folks will keep spending on what they consider relatively inexpensive "treats." Some might even increase their spending on such products or services to reward themselves for putting off spending on big-ticket items.

Examples of "small indulgence" products and services include relatively inexpensive:

• Entertainment, such as video-streaming
• Comfort foods (such as chocolates), meals out (fast-food restaurants)

What stocks gained or held up relatively well during the Great Recession?

All recessions are somewhat different, so it's not possible to say that just because select stocks held up well during prior recessions, they'll hold up well in future ones. That said, in general, certain types of stocks tend to perform better than others during tough economic climates, as discussed above, so investors can learn valuable lessons by looking at past recessions.

The Great Recession was a deep economic downturn that officially lasted for 18 months from Dec. 2007 through the end of May 2009. It's widely considered the most severe U.S. economic downturn since the Great Depression, which began following the stock market crash in 1929 and didn't end until the start of World War II in 1940.

During the one-and-a-half years of the Great Recession, the S&P 500 index, including dividends, plunged 35.6%.

Table 1: Stocks that gained during the Great Recession

These stocks and one exchange-traded fund (ETF) are listed in order of descending performance during the Great Recession. This list isn't all-inclusive.

Company	Market Cap	Dividend Yield	Wall Street's Projected 5-Year Annualized EPS Growth	Return During Great Recession	Return From Start of Great Recession to Present*
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX)	$469 billion	--	23.6%	70.7%	33,280%
iShares Gold Trust ETF	$41.9 billion net assets	--	--	24.3%	302%
J&J Snack Foods	$2.5 billion	2.4%	9.1%	18.1%	404%
Walmart	$762 billion	1%	9.5%	7.3%	761%
McDonald's	$226 billion	2.2%	7.6%	4.7%	778%
S&P 500 index	--	1.36%	--	(35.6%)	424%

Data sources: Yahoo! Finance, finviz.com and YCharts. Data to Friday, April 25, 2025. EPS = earnings per share. *Bold-faced returns = stock has beaten the S&P 500.

• Netflix: Video-streaming pioneer that's the world's leading video-streaming company.
• iShares Gold Trust ETF: Exchange-traded fund that aims to track the price of gold.
• J&J Snack Foods: Produces niche snack foods and frozen beverages.
• Walmart: World's largest retailer by revenue, focuses on low prices.
• McDonald's: World's largest fast-food restaurant chain by revenue.

Table 2: Stocks that held up relatively well during the Great Recession

The following stocks declined during the Great Recession but held up much better than the broader market, which dropped nearly 36%. This list isn't all-inclusive.

Company	Market Cap	Dividend Yield	Wall Street's Projected 5-Year Annualized EPS Growth	Return During Great Recession	Return From Start of Great Recession to Present*
Newmont	$60.8 billion	1.8%	7.2%	(0.3%)	54.5%
Hershey (NYSE: HSY)	$33.1 billion	3.4%	(7.4%)	(7.2%)	524%
Church & Dwight (NYSE: CHD)	$24.4 billion	1.2%	7.4%	(9.6%)	792%
American Water Works (NYSE: AWK)	$28.1 billion	2.1%	6.5%	(12.7%)*	953%
NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE)	$136 billion	3.4%	8.2%	(15.7%)	531%
S&P 500 index	--	1.36%	--	(35.6%)	424%

Data sources: Yahoo! Finance, finviz.com, and YCharts. Data to Friday, April 25, 2025. EPS = earnings per share. *Bold-faced returns = stock has beaten the S&P 500. **Company went public in April 2008, a few months after the recession started.

• Newmont: World's largest gold mining company, which also mines other metals.
• Hershey: Largest chocolate company in the U.S. by market share, also sells salty snack foods.
• Church & Dwight: Home and personal-care product maker, best known for its iconic Arm and Hammer brand baking soda.
• American Water Works: The largest and most geographically diverse regulated U.S. water and wastewater utility.
• NextEra Energy: Largest electric utility in the U.S. by market cap and the world's largest generator of renewable energy from wind and sun.

Key takeaways from the above 2 tables

1. Gold mining stocks (Newmont, Table 2) and gold ETFs (iShares Gold Trust ETF, Table 1) might hold up well or even make strong gains during tough economic climates, but they rarely perform well during booming economic times. Therefore, they tend to underperform the market over the long term. These investments are highly volatile and cyclical and best left to short-term traders.

2. Netflix and Hershey are good examples of "small indulgence stocks," as described above. Moreover, Netflix has an added benefit that wasn't an issue during the Great Recession: It should be little affected by the raging tariff war, as U.S tariffs on imports and other countries' retaliatory tariffs are on goods, not services. This is an important distinction that investors should keep in mind when selecting stocks.

3. Top utility stocks can outperform the market over the long term, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. (Cases in point: American Water Works and NextEra Energy, Table 2.) These stocks aren't just "widow and orphan stocks," as stockbrokers, in general, have long characterized them. A statistic that might surprise many investors: As of April 25, shares of Google parent Alphabet have performed only slightly better than shares of American Water since the latter's initial public offering (IPO) 17 years ago in April 2008: GOOGL has returned 1,090% to AWK's 953%.

4. There are some top-performing stocks that get very little coverage in the financial press. (Case in point: Church & Dwight, Table 2). One takeaway here is that investors shouldn't conflate the amount of coverage a stock gets in the financial press with its desirability as an investment, especially a long-term investment.

Review your stock holdings -- but stay in the market

As noted in this article's opening, top Wall Street banks and economists generally give odds ranging from 40% to 60% that the U.S. will have a recession in 2025 or within the next year. These are quite high odds, so it makes sense that investors review their stock portfolio and perhaps tweak it to make it more recession-resistant.

That said, if you're a long-term investor, it's not a good idea to get out of the stock market entirely or make huge changes, such as selling all of your growth stocks. It's extremely difficult to time the market. If you sell your growth stocks that don't tend to do well during recessions (such as tech stocks), you'll risk missing the early stages of their upturns during the next bull market -- and the early stages of a sustained upturn tend to be strong.

Time is a long-term investor's friend. Over the long term, the direction of the U.S. stock market has been decisively up. The longer your investing time frame, the less concerned you need to be about recessions causing market downturns.

Should you invest $1,000 in Netflix right now?

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Beth McKenna has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Goldman Sachs Group, Hershey, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, NextEra Energy, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) held its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025 last month in San Jose, California. The artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader's annual happening is widely considered the world's leading AI event.

I watched CEO Jensen Huang's two-hour keynote address in real time, caught a couple of his interviews, and viewed several panel discussions about AI and humanoid robots. Great information was shared during all these events, particularly Huang's keynote. It was chock-full of promising new product launches and partnerships, reinforcing my bullish view of Nvidia stock as a long-term investment.

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But there was one incredibly bullish thing he said during GTC week that most investors probably aren't aware of. It wasn't uttered during his keynote or an interview, but at the GTC Financial Analyst Q&A on March 19.

Is Nvidia's AI business better than "just" recession-resistant?

A Wall Street analyst asked this question at the Q&A event: "If there's a recession, what does that do to your business? To AI demand?"

Huang's answer: "If there's a recession, I think that the companies that are working on AI are going to shift even more investment toward AI because it's the fastest growing [area/space]. Every CEO will know to shift toward what is growing."

I think a reasonable interpretation of his answer is that he's suggesting a recession should increase, or at least not decrease, demand for the company's AI-enabling products. Those products, collectively, garnered at least 87% of the company's total revenue in its most recent quarter, which ended in late January. (The data center segment's products are essentially all AI-enabling, and this segment took in about 87% of the company's revenue in the most recent quarter.)

Huang's answer might seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense upon reflection. CEOs, especially in certain industries, realize that AI investments are now so critical that they are a necessity. Innovations in AI are occuring so rapidly that companies that cut back on AI investments even for a relatively brief time will likely fall behind their competitors in AI capabilities. This could lead to an existential crisis from which they might not ever recover.

Let's say that Apple decided to cut back on its AI investments during the next economic downturn or full-fledged recession. It could risk potentially permanently losing some of its iPhone customers to competitors, namely makers of cellphones that use Alphabet's Android operating system. That would be a risky move, since the iPhone is its bread-and-butter product.

As Palantir CEO Alex Karp bluntly put it in the AI-powered data analytics company's third-quarter 2024 earnings release, "The world will be divided between AI haves and have-nots." Indeed, it seems probable that the AI haves, which could be companies or countries, will be winners, and the AI have-nots will be losers.

Nvidia is built to weather tough times

Data by YCharts. Data as of each company's most recently reported quarter. Free cash flow numbers are for the trailing-12-month period.

What if Huang's statement proves inaccurate and demand for AI-enabling products and services -- including Nvidia's -- decreases during the next economic downturn or recession?

Investors should fear not, as Nvidia's balance sheet is hardy. The company is in a better position than most of its peers and competitors to weather a downturn in demand leading to lower revenue, earnings, and cash flows.

As the chart shows, Nvidia's cash position and long-term debt are roughly equal at about $8.5 billion to $8.6 billion. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has more cash than long-term debt, so it's also in good shape in this respect. But chipmakers Broadcom and Intel have much more long-term debt than they have cash, so they're using a lot of cash to service their debt. This is an OK situation for Broadcom because it has strong cash flows, at least currently, but Intel is bleeding cash. Over the last year, Intel's free cash flow (FCF) was negative-$15.7 billion, almost double its cash on hand.

Nvidia is an FCF machine. Over the past year, it churned out $60.9 billion in FCF. It could easily use its cash flow to pay down, or even fully pay off, its long-term debt. But it makes sense that it doesn't do so. The company's big cash position coupled with its massive FCF provides it with many options for investing in long-term growth initiatives.

Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now?

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $578,035!*

Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Beth McKenna has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: short May 2025 $30 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.